Comments

As far as i am concerned the cases of politicial and social factors influenciing one's position is quite common all over the world and i am not inche moved with the article written by Mr. Pei about Mr. Bo. But i think this cases of political forces mingling with the promotion is quite popular in one party nation like China. We have seen the case of the Presidnet of Russia, Mr. Putin obtaining his Ph.d thesis without actually doing it. So i think these cases are prevalent in Authoritarian nation.

Mr. Pei's comments on many senior Chinese officials use fradulent or dubious academic degrees are his conjecture. Where are his factual evidence to back his statement other than guesswork and speculation based on his observations? I respect freedom of opinion, but there must be limits to such freedom. Also, I am utterly disappointed that, as a FULL Professor in an acclaimed university, he should know better than to provide unsubstantiated written opinion. Worse still, Project Syndicate should have vetted before publishing such sloppy work.

The argument is that the world community is naive and unaware of Chinese corruption and lack of meritocracy. But it is the writer of the article who is naive by implying that China is somehow especially non-meritocratic. Reality tells us that there's one more myth to be busted, if we are at this topic. The myth of Western meritocracy or indeed of meritocracy of any kind. Decades of world-wide neoliberalism has lead to a complete erosion of moral standards and integrity in the whole world. Does the case of Japan really differ from that of China? Does South Koreea really excel in integrity and merit when we hear all the corrupt deals that are happening there? How about Britain, where we can see Murdoch's monumental influence in politics and business?

The argument for Bo's inefficiency are hilarious. If Mr Minxin Pei believes that those are failures, I would like to invite him to take a look at Europe and their incentive-based meritocratic political system. Also take a deep look at the private sector and its meritocratical values, also its spending&borrowing patterns, and then the bailout successes. And the political lobbying. The media in britain, italy and pretty much all europe, the financial sector in britain, iceland, greece.. you name it. Are these countries beams of meritocracy and integrity to compare them with shady China?

The educational system in China abounds of corruption and apparatchiks. No degree of comparison between this and Europe, where the academia has been left at the expense of the private sector. In these advanced western neoliberal societies academics win an extra buck by supporting neoliberal theories of blissful deregulation, being on the payroll of huge corporations (financial, military corporations, Stratfor) and by having an impeccable conduct when assessing students. Especially in Britain, where the children of the aristocracy - ancient and modern alike - reach all of them at the best of the best universities. Their performance is magnificent and at no way to be equaled by commoners, who have way less chances of ever being admitted to Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, St Andrews than pure-blooded Bullingdon club destined younglings.

The reality is hidden in what is not discussed in this article. The ideological orientation of Bo Xilai as a hard-line leftist with a strong powerbase is especially interesting. In other words, the Communist Party of China ousted a big chunk of its left wing in an affair that also involves British intelligence. It also launched a huge media campaign in online and print to control the information flow and to assess the feedback of the news. But we'll call it a "valauable function in cleansing governments". It is somehow moral, since its some bad chinese communists involved, to consider "cleansing individuals of dubious character" a positive act, rather than one that should be analysed to see if that's all it is.

The use of Chinese terms for corruption and office buying has a magical force. I have seen it in relations to many countries in the Balkans for example. But corruption is a very bad concept, it almost magically incorporates all a societies' illnesses and unites them in one symbol.

I wonder if there is a parallel of sorts in the so-called financial industry. Consider the JP MOrgan Chase exec, Ina Drew, who recently stepped down in the $2b trading fiasco. She earned $10m in 2010 despite being on medical leave and 40% more, $14 mil, in 2011. Now we are told that the big loss was a result of sloppiness, obvious miscalculations, and a failure of adequate oversight. She will resign with a generous golden parachute I'm sure.

Either way, as in China, it's a system that allows for great profit-taking without any real risk. In any large bureaucracies people rise to their level of incompetence. Raking off the value created by labor in the name of party expertise (China) or management expertise (the west), ultimately it's the same thing.

Shouldn't a professor of history be capable of reflecting upon a culture's history? A nation with a stolid history of stability being the first order of business every morning generally relies on the people they know - rather than the people who just graduated to positions of influence.

That's neither a positive or negative - though the latter would be the tendency in my eyes.

I had no idea that China had a "stolid history of stability" when that history is racked with 4,000 years worth of wars, civil wars, riots, and revolutions. It's all covered in China's various famous historical texts, each half a dozen times thicker than the average Christian Bible.

Alberto Bagnai, ET AL
want the Greek government to abandon the euro – and all other eurozone members to follow suit.

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